Do you feel people have an unfair racial bias against Jrock or other "Asian music"?

[lichtlune 915]

Most everyone I've shown my music to have expressed either neutral or negative thoughts about it. Even my father who's into a lot of nu-metal and a little bit of deathcore doesn't seem to have any reaction when I show him bands which suit those interests. Most people seem to bring up the language barrier a lot. Do you believe this to be a valid argument? Or do you believe this is just a cover up for an ingrained racial bias? What are your experiences when sharing your music to others?

[vanivani 558]

From my personal experience I would say it comes down to the language barrier. Most people I've spoken to say they like to know what the lyrics are, so hearing music in a foreign language can be a turn off for them because they don't know what they're saying. For some people it could be due to racism, but at least from the people I've spoken to race wasn't brought up at all.

[doombox 4421]

I'd also say the language barrier is the bigger problem when I share japanese bands with friends. When I play Japanese bands that sing in English they usually go over quite well. 

[Tokage 5930]

Like everyone else has said so far, I definitely believe it's more of a language barrier thing in general, rather than pure racism towards Japanese. Play something that's not in English/the listener's native tongue and they'll usually respond with something like ''wow how can u like this if u cant even understand what they're saying!!!!''. If race ever DOES come up, in my case it's mostly been people treating all things Japanese as some sort of crazy novelty thing.

[Flame-X 441]

Pretty much what others said above...

 

I personally have a bias against kpop music. As a Korean, for some reason I just can't stand hearing that language in music. It's weird to me.

[LIDL 692]

Nah, men in make up is still something unusual to general people. It may be too provocative for them regardless the music genres.

 

Another thing is, the language barrier, as everyone else has said. Many people I know would not hear songs from language they don't understand, cos they want to know what the bands or singers sing.

 

[Original Saku 1593]

Definitely the language barrier, people just don't understand the concept of vocals not being the only part that matters in music, there's this weird perception (at least where I'm from) that the most important part of a song is the vocals and if it doesn't have vocals or it's in another language then it's not worth their attention... I can't even begin to explain how backwards this is, music is made up of more than just the vocalist and the lyrics, but people are hard pressed to listen to a pure instrumental song around here, it seem no vocals = boring music that's not worth the time. Not to mention there's a little something call vocal melody that you don't need to understand the language to hear.

 

then there's the people that see VK bands and it turns into a sexism thing.

[nullmoon 784]

Definitely the language barrier. Ironically, I listen to J-Rock BECAUSE I don't understand it. There's been many a time when a musically great song performed in English has been ruined for me by lame lyrics. I never get that problem with J-Rock; I can focus on the music itself and appreciate the song as a whole. 

[BrenGun 2261]

language barrier. 

 

but since its not mainstream people don't take it serious.

 

there are songs in languages people don't understand in top 10～100.

 

but language is big big thing.

if bot, spanish, french, german or English people kinda call it not their taste. XD

 

 

[platy 3018]

I haven't come across the language thing yet. Whenever I show people Jrock etc, what tends to put them off is the whole look. "Are they gay?" "Those aren't women?" these are the first things that people say and they just get so fixated on the look that they don't give a shit about the music. My mom is one of the few people I tried to introduce to the genre that appreciates both the looks and the music even though it's not to her taste, if I show her a song she can always appreciate the art.

 

Also like someone already mentioned, it's not mainstream and it isn't something you see often so people tend to not take it seriously. It's a lot easier to get people into K-pop than J-rock/ VK. I'm guessing the use of common melodies and a more approachable look help.

[hiroki 5521]

2 hours ago, Original Saku said:

Definitely the language barrier, people just don't understand the concept of vocals not being the only part that matters in music, there's this weird perception (at least where I'm from) that the most important part of a song is the vocals and if it doesn't have vocals or it's in another language then it's not worth their attention... I can't even begin to explain how backwards this is, music is made up of more than just the vocalist and the lyrics, but people are hard pressed to listen to a pure instrumental song around here, it seem no vocals = boring music that's not worth the time. Not to mention there's a little something call vocal melody that you don't need to understand the language to hear.

 

just to provide a different perspective in the interest of discussion:

 

i can perfectly understand why not understanding the language can put people off. for me, listening to a song without being to understand its lyrics is akin to watching a movie in a foreign language without subtitles--no matter how dazzling its cinematography or magnificent its cast, i can't help but feel that i'm missing a part of the overall experience the audience is supposed to have. likewise, lyrics are there in a song whether we like it or not. we may think it's not important (or not the most important element of a song), but it's difficult to pretend they don't exist. of course, good music is still good music regardless if we understand the lyrics - but the latter cannot be subsumed under the former for a variety of reasons, not least of which because words have "content" (sense/meaning) while music is extralinguistic. i made a longer post on this some time ago here if anyone's interested.

 

anyway i'm not here to argue whether and to what extent we should care about lyrics; that isn't exactly the point of this thread, and it's something i believe we can all reasonably differ on. but i thought i'd just point out that the language barrier is a perfectly real impediment to our understanding of the song (as opposed to our experience of the song's music--there's a crucial difference), and that this isn't "backward" in any way, nor is the ability to force oneself to ignore the lyrics in a song in favor of focusing exclusively on its musical elements any more enlightened or erroneous.

 

as for the "racism" hypothesis: lol i've never thought about it that way. if i show my friends a vk song and they hate it, that just means.... they hate the song. it's difficult for me to extrapolate from this to reach the conclusion that someone is racist. and if it turns out that someone is indeed racist, chances are their racism will be more discernible from a thousand other things in their behavior than something as contingent as their taste in music.

[Tokage 5930]

The racism angle is there if you show Japanese music to someone and they respond by going all ''wow this is so bad it's just ching chang chong xDDDD'' or some crap like that, though..

[beni 2149]

I remember when I showed a group of friends Jrock and Jpop, their main and usually only question was on the lines of "how can you listen to them when you don't know what they're saying?" This is just a small experience of mine but one I think also goes to show what everyone has already said above. 

[shiroihana 182]

Yeah people dismiss the music a lot here too just because it's Japanese. I'm just like "so what if you can't understand it" you know.. I find it so strange because Japan is filled with so many talented musicians and bands but all of it goes over their heads for such petty reasons. I think it's mostly because they're not used to it though. As for visual kei the language barrier or racism is not the only issue here. We are a vast minority not just as Japanese music fans but also as visual kei fans because so many people will say things like "Those are guys?!" or "Fags!" and it's pretty ridiculous and ignorant. Most anime music fans I know wouldn't like visual kei, unless it's Nightmare or other VK bands who appeared in anime intros / outros.

 

As for the language barrier issue: Music is much more than lyrics. Lyrics give a song meaning, but the sound is ultimately what makes the song and because of this dismissing a song because of lyrics is absurd. If you listen to mainstream pop or rap music on the radio the lyrics are 90% vapid meaningless lyrics that are repeated over and over again. Sometimes the lyrics don't even make any sense too and these people just want a 'beat' to listen to, so I don't understand why someone would dismiss Japanese music based on lyrics when the sound can make up so much for that lack of understanding.

Edited May 1, 2016 by shiroihana

[Chi 2624]

Language is the biggest problem/excuse people give. I do not think it is because they don't understand it though.

Even though I do not live in a country where english is our mother language, listening to music sung in english is seen as normal as portuguese.

Edited May 1, 2016 by seurong

[Traxan 148]

I definitely think there is anti-Japanese sentiment. I see it most with the anti-Babymetal crowd. After the initial round of "they aren't metal" claims will often come the racist comments. I swear some people act like Pearl Harbor was last week, not 75 years ago.

[nullmoon 784]

Just as food for thought, has anyone experienced the opposite? I have a friend who pretty much refuses to listen to Western music on the basis it pales in comparison to K-Pop and J-Rock. In a sense they're not wrong XD 

[platy 3018]

12 hours ago, nullmoon said:

Just as food for thought, has anyone experienced the opposite? I have a friend who pretty much refuses to listen to Western music on the basis it pales in comparison to K-Pop and J-Rock. In a sense they're not wrong XD 

 Yeah I've come across people like that, "japanese artists are way more talented" or "k-pop is so much cooler than shitty western boy groups". Those statements usually come from hardcore weeabos or koreabos and are nothing but ignorance imo.  Once I met this korean guy and asked what he thinks of Shinee, he said they're annoying and their music is rubbish. That's how I feel about most western boy groups (One direction,etc.). I would even say Shinee is the korean equivalent of One Direction...wait, don't beat me up yet. It's hard to deny the amount of production and stuff that goes into k-pop that makes it more entertaining than western boy bands, but at the end of the day, theyre just one of countless boy bands. Over there, they are probably nothing special, just like one direction is nothing special to most people in the west. Anyway, I think i'm trying to saying Idolising something just because it's from X country and thinking it's superior is a bit eh.

[Saishu 1589]

A lot of things to touch on here. 

 

For one, as has been pointed out several times, the language barrier bothers a lot of people. For a lot of people, being able to sing along is top priority. While I agree that's fun, that's the last thing I think about when it comes to music. 

 

But then there's just straight up racism involved, which I witnessed first hand at a couple DEG shows. "I CANT UNDERSTAND YOU!"  "GO BACK TO JAPAN!"  Nonsense like that. People that are ignorant and afraid of anything that isn't familiar to them. 

 

But as far as people that think j-music is superior to Western music, well, I think the major factor is how long they've been listening. If you're new to j-rock, you're going to think it's superior because the sound is new, especially if you've grown tired of the same old sounds of the music from your country. 

 

[peffy 3568]

On 5/2/2016 at 3:39 AM, nullmoon said:

Just as food for thought, has anyone experienced the opposite? I have a friend who pretty much refuses to listen to Western music on the basis it pales in comparison to K-Pop and J-Rock. In a sense they're not wrong XD 

 

That's me, sort of. I haven't liked listening to Western/English stuff for the past 12 years. I'm not going to go crazy and say "all Western music sucks, JROCK 4EVER!!!!!", it's just not what I prefer to listen to. I imagine it is the same for all my friends - they just prefer to listen to Western stuff. They can acknowledge that an Asian musician is talented, but they aren't going to go out of their way to download/buy/listen to the music.

 

I am guessing that trends have a lot to do with it as well. When all of their friends (except me) listen to Adele, Beyonce, Drake, or whatever the hell is popular these days, it's just easier to go along and like the same things. This also explains why they can be into BABYMETAL, PSY, whatever Kpop, etc despite the language barrier. Aside from Korean speakers, nobody knew what the lyrics to Gangnam Style meant, but it was still a huge worldwide hit.

 

On 5/2/2016 at 4:50 PM, Saishu said:

 

For one, as has been pointed out several times, the language barrier bothers a lot of people. For a lot of people, being able to sing along is top priority. 

 

 

This is the reason I started up my lyrics site - to help people who can't read/understand Japanese sing along to Japanese songs. Actually one of the biggest reasons I started getting into Japanese music, before I knew any Japanese, was that I found the language attractive-sounding and fun to pronounce/sing along to.

 

edit: As for racial bias, I haven't really noticed it, but that could be due to nearly all of my friends/family being Chinese..

Edited May 4, 2016 by peffy

[desparejo86 160]

Definitely not a racial bias. Maybe a weaboo bias, though.

 

In America at least, the concept of the anime nerd/weaboo/otaku has been a thing for almost 20 years now. People are aware of it. And I'm sure a lot of people, when you try to not only play them Japanese music but music by Japanese guys that look (to them) like they just left an anime convention, they're going to go "Oh, you're one of those weirdos that used to sing anime theme songs to themselves on the bus."

 

Couple that with the fact that 99%+ of people, at least in the USA, would never seriously try to listen to music sung in a language they don't understand, and I think that pretty much explains the lack of interest.

 

When I was younger I would try to turn people onto  visual. The only people it ever stuck with were musicians who listened to bands for the guitars/performance aspect as much as for the songs themselves.

Edited May 4, 2016 by desparejo86

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

I'm kind of surprised that a lot of European members are stating that it's a language barrier. Maybe I don't have a correct perspective, but I thought pop culture in the EU is presented in numerous languages that aren't necessarily in each country's native tongue. Is it that Japanese is so different from things like romance languages that it's a turn off?

 

In the US, at least, the overwhelming majority of music is in English. On occasion, songs will be in Spanish (this happens more often if you're listening to a station or show that's aimed at an audience who's first language is Spanish) and every so often I see people post Rammstein on Facebook because it's "cool and AnGrY!!1"

 

Within the past 3 years, more and more people like K-pop though. I've heard 2NE1's "I am the Best" played at stores in the mall and on the radio, and when Gangum Style was a hit that was all over the place too.

[evilcoconut 109]

From my experience, it's the lyric thing for some bizarre reason. No idea why that's such an issue with people, but I've also heard people say they think Asian artists are just "copying" Americans, so you could def read racism into that one.

[chemicalpictures 1888]

Mainly a language barrier I think, and close on second, japanese vocalists tone. It's way too weird for a regular western ear.

 

And the idea of eastern songs being better than western ones is called fan bias. No, it is not. Neither is western better than eastern. It's absolutely a case by case scenario, you can find great songs, compositions, structures and vocalists/guitarrists/drummers etc etc etc E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E.

[colorful人生 2777]

From what I've shown to friends of mine (in the U.S) it's either one of the following:

 

1. Language Barrier ("I can't listen to it w/o understanding the lyrics" or "The language sounds "weird") [Totally understandable BTW]

2. Any guy who wears makeup/cross dresses/etc. is automatically gay (More specific to VK)

3. Your interest in Japanese pop culture was supposed to be short-lived fad from your teenage years ("You're still listening to anime music?"/ ASSIMILATE PLZ)

4. It's simply not my taste [Again, totally understandable]

 

...and something actually interesting to talk about....

 

5. The melodies are "cheesy".

 

Idk if this has been mentioned before, but whether it's the preconceived notions they get from watching idol groups or anime songs; "cheesy" gets brought up a lot.

Since I'm not really versed in Music Theory, I can't explain this very well... This first comment from "nonotan" does though (to some extent):

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/2e5v76/what_makes_some_japanese_music_sound_japanese/

( Also reaffirmed my love of DeBussy ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) )

 

Now, w/ idol groups and certain J-pop artists (who cater to a certain demographic) it makes sense for them to be "cheesy" (your "Pretty Cure" openings will never be edgy =P).

Cheesiness can also be applicable visually, so many can find a lot of VK MVs to be really cheesy (additionally dependent on taste). 

However, I've seen this comment with less flashy, run-of-the-mill J-artists and more importantly, instrumentals/OSTs. 

 

I can't really delve into more since my knowledge is limited w/ this topic, but I just found #5 to be an interesting take on all of this.

 

---

 

Also

6. YO JAPANESE MUSIC R SHIT CUZ OF PEARL HARBOR & THEY GOT FUCKED UP BY THE NUKES.

(Very, very, uncommon lol. Though that Women's World Cup (soccer/futbol/football) win caused a shit-ton of comments like that xD. People are strange)

 

Edited May 6, 2016 by colorfuljinsei